ineedart

In the animation class I successfully made a clip showing Rrose’s signature piece (as described below). This proved the concept of what I had in mind for all parts of the piece.

There are still some things to be done. Firstly, the class session was ending just as I was about finished, so I exported the movie even though I knew that a frame was out of sequence. You can see the full signature flash on screen before it is supposed to be there. That can easily be fixed next time. Also, I want to have one more go at making the timing and motion graceful. It is not bad, but I would like to experiment with further wave-like motions, and slow things down a bit. Then, of course, the final step will be the addition of music.

revision 26 January 2009

A short stop-action animated clip. The plan is to make this in the animation class by using a real rose and running the animation clip in reverse.

Rrose frequently wrote in her journal:

I need art.

A rough outline of the video follows:

The camera is facing directly down onto a blank sheet of paper. In the top 1/3 of the screen is a rose stem.

Gradually, rose petals move onto the paper and arrange themselves into clusters. There are two rows of four clusters each.

Petals move from the first cluster up to rejoin the stem, revealing the letter I written on the paper.

Petals move from the next four clusters to rejoin the stem, revealing the letters N E E D.

Petals move from the final three clusters to the stem, revealing A R T. (see below for how the letters are arranged).

The signature of Rrose Sélavy is gradually written at the bottom of the screen.

Variation: a butterfly appears and flies around a bit, landing on the rose.

Variation: between shots 2 and 3, the petals form a cocoon-like cluster, and then rearrange themselves into a butterfly.

I

N

E

E

D

A

R

T

Original version created 20 July 2008

This is not yet a piece, just an idea at the moment. Rrose frequently wrote in the journal,

I need art.

Expression was frustrated with no outlet. An animation can be created to express this as follows:

One letter at a time written in large black marker on a journal page: I N E E D A R T

The letters are arranged in three rows with no spaces between, so it isn’t immediately clear what is being written.

The page is torn out and crumpled, placed to the side of the tablet, then another sequence of the same appears but each time written more coarsely and with different arrangement.

Crumpled pages accumulate.

The next sequence has the phrase written down with rose petals appearing gradually covering each letter.

The petals migrate to the centre, and gradually rejoin into a rose sitting on top of the paper.

Creating the second sequence just involves gradually pulling petals off a rose, moving them onto position over each letter, removing them a few at a time. Run the images in reverse sequence in the video clip.

Audio version

An audio version of this piece could involve sampling and distortion of the first sentence below said once and the next bit said as a chant over and over.